


Mind Games

by PrincessDesire



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armpit Kink, Blood As Lube, Bloodplay, Daddy Issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Knifeplay, M/M, Possessive Behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:29:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27845275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessDesire/pseuds/PrincessDesire
Summary: Hux uses his imagination to make Kylo jealous.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 9
Kudos: 49





	Mind Games

_Warm breath against an ear, cheek stubble brushing against a smooth cheek, and a whispered proposition, a scandalous one. The heated breath that travels to the ear isn’t what causes the flush, but helps stimulate the consideration of accepting._

The first thought that Kylo Ren intercepts is probably the first one formed, and it hits him with nearly the strength of a message pushed by the Force. He raises his helmeted head, seeking out the origin of the sensation, as though it is in front of him and not tucked away behind the _Finalizer_ ’s walls and past winding corridors. Kneeling before his grandfather’s shrine, he’s no longer in the contemplative headspace he was moments before.

_A gloved hand follows the line of breath, thumb toying with the lobe before trailing past crisp sideburns into short surprisingly soft red hairs. The soliciting lips and their accompanying warm breeze move closer to lips normally kept pressed tight when they aren’t sneering, when they aren’t barking orders, when they aren’t sucking desperate rings in Kylo’s flesh._

He’s up in an instant, ignited faster than his lightsaber but just as lethal. He knows those sideburns and knows those lips, and they belong to no one else but himself, not even the man to whom they’re attached. He grabs his weapon and leaves behind his quarters, heading now to the place where this theft is occurring. 

_Hesitation, slight, easily overcome by a sensation of desire, but then the two sets of lips meet, one plush when not pulled deceptively taut and one ravenous, undefined in shape or texture, defined only by their cravenness. Hux’s mouth, place of origin for innumerable death sentences and insults sharper than an assassin’s blade, invites in a pillaging tongue, just throws open the gates to the invading army as he never would within the Order._

Kylo seethes, his vision coloring the red of his Kyber crystal, and his fist reaches out even as he steps with long strides forward, smashes into Hux’s ship. He’ll take it down around them if this persists, if his general doesn’t put an end to this. He can sense Hux in his quarters. It’s not a long walk, even on a craft this size, not for a determined man of considerable stride length. 

_The bite is cruel, aimed just at the tip of sucked in flesh, so that it hurts more, and it entices the stranger, the criminal, the invader. Firmly pressed hips demonstrate this pleasure, and a seeking hand slides around to pull their already united bodies closer somehow. Another whisper, an expression of appreciation, and the platitude shouldn’t work, usually falls on ears too practical to believe amorous words, but there’s something different to the way the invader says them, something more believable than when they fall from Kylo’s mouth. Hux moans._

The moan echoes like thunder in Kylo’s brain and the anger turns white. That sound is for him alone. That general is for him alone. He won’t run this fiend through, that would be too easy. He wants to pluck his limbs like Ben would Borer Beetles when bored on Kashyyyk. He wants to scald every inch of this scum’s skin with boiling liquid. The grotesque imagery of all he will do wars with the sensory input from the Force of what is happening in Hux’s quarters, his so-close destination.

_Insistent fingers tug at the always freshly-pressed uniform, encouraging its removal, begging access to the vulnerable pale skin always kept from sunlight. Surer fingers, long and slender with nails trimmed down until no white shows, move to the uniform’s closures. The voice encourages even as the lips move lower to an elegant neck, and slowly the fingers do as the mouth had done, opening Kylo’s territory to invasion. Exposed skin is immediately covered by lips and saliva._

Kylo is still ten meters away when he Force-overrides the door, smashing it open with his outstretched hand. Let that startle them, let the thief try and escape. There’s nowhere in the galaxy that could provide the fiend safety. 

_A smile. No fear. Exhilaration. Triumphant exhilaration._

Kylo Ren comes through the door to Hux’s quarters as a man possessed. His great chest heaves beneath all the layers of black and his eyes scour the scene before him. For a moment, the one in his head overlays the true state of things. For that briefest of seconds, he sees the intruder with his hands and mouth all over his general, sees the tipped back head of red and the vampire at his throat. With his eyes, though, he sees something very different. It’s Hux, standing, smirking, arms crossed, fully dressed, and eyes lit as though from Starkiller itself. 

There’s no one here, but Hux. 

Hux and his sadistic, crafty, overly-imaginative brain. 

Hux’s body rises with Kylo’s hand. His collision with the wall is gentler than it could be considering the pulses of homicidal machinations still bursting into Kylo’s brain and mind’s eye, but rough enough to knock the wind out of him. Kylo steps up to his lover, to the scheming man who only adds more worries to his life, and grasps firmly at his chin. He allows the vocoder to do its job, altering his already too-deep voice and making it inhuman, threatening in its unreality. 

“You think too loud.”

The unrepentant sparkle found in Hux’s eyes confesses on his behalf. The bastard doesn’t even have the self-preservation to deny what he’d done, or perhaps, he’s just no longer afraid of what this particular servant of the dark side would do when fully provoked. 

Kylo still wants to kill. Even if it was all a fantasy, he wants to slay the faceless imagined man debauching his Hux. He can’t dismember one isolated line of thinking, can’t set it ablaze and bask in the heat from the flames. 

“You’ve played a dangerous game,” he says, unsure if his general knows this. Kylo Ren, even at his most post-coital and exhausted, is still wild, prone to swings of temper and impulse. It is in Hux’s best interest that he not think of himself as a tamer of beasts for there is nothing Kylo can stand less than the cage of others’ expectations, and he could turn and bite that hand as easily as he had others who had meant something to him before.

He lowers his hand, dropping it from chin to collared neck, but he holds Hux’s vocal cords in place with his powers, unwilling to allow the snide comment lying in wait to escape. There’s always something there - a retort, a sarcastic observation, a stinging insult - and the swirling rage inside him won’t bear its appearance. He doesn’t need to push hard to feel the strong cords of muscle beneath his gloved hand, its resistance is like every other part of Hux - tense and unassumingly solid.

Dammit. He needs to destroy the unreal degenerate who had his lips on this neck. This is _his_ neck that refuses to yield to the tightening of his hand. _His_. 

He releases the physical hold he has on Hux, maintaining the mental, and removes his helmet. He hurls it across the quarters and, satisfyingly, it knocks something off the wall, some art or some icon of achievement, with a loud crash. It would serve him right if Kylo destroyed the entire place.

Hux’s eyes are still beacons. This is going according to some plan of his, poking the bear to get off on Kylo’s anger. Vaguely, he comprehends that his lover wouldn’t do something like this if he didn’t expect Kylo to rise to the occasion, but the figure had made Hux moan, and he is incapable of not reacting. He needs to reclaim this territory, even if it means giving the conniving bastard exactly what he wants.

Removing the uniform doesn’t even require his hands, but he uses them anyway, pulling the fabric away roughly, wishing it tore more easily, but not even so much as a split seam appears in any of the shed high-quality layers. Sometimes he takes his time doing this, sometimes he doesn’t bother at all, offering oral ministrations to the cock jutting like a lever from the fly of the uniform’s pants. Now, he tosses each aside as quickly as he gets them off, hoping to strike more furnishings but not aiming at anything in particular.

Hux is naked but for his socks, still pinned to the wall and still loving it, his lips fighting a smile that would no doubt look more self-satisfied than the Devil’s were it to fully spread itself, and his head leaning back farther, maximizing the access to his body. Total physical surrender is nothing new, had been the norm, in fact, since the first time, once he’d either figured out that Kylo was going to fuck him not kill him, or since he’d stopped caring if either happened.

Kylo’s mouth covers the delicate skin of his general’s neck, sinking his teeth where his glove had been earlier, in that little dip that sometimes rumbles when Kylo's dick prods the perfect spot. Visions dance behind his eyes of the shadowed figure in his place, and he bites to replace them, licks to taste only his spit upon the prize he’d won many months back. He sucks on the right and the left, then on the apple in the center. 

Kylo’s hand roams across alabaster skin dotted with freckles and moles. Rather than crane his neck down, he raises Hux’s body ever so slightly higher through the Force. Knowing this was planned, that the redhead arranged his arrival with his fantasies, Kylo can lick all the way up one torso side continuing up into the armpit without concern for any hygienic products to block the natural taste there. He groans when he licks through the soft patch of downy hair and comes away with tongue and nostrils filled with the musk of his lover. The first time he’d rooted around there like a pig after truffles, Hux had been aghast. It was “disgusting” and “filthy,” words truly meant, but Kylo’s rebuttal “All of this is disgusting and filthy,” had outmaneuvered his logic and “It tickles,” another very real objection, had fallen with embarrassed reluctance from his lips. His complaints had lessened in inverse proportion to Kylo’s arousal, however, and the lack of deodorant became a signal that he’s up for a tickle that day, ready to squirm underneath the assault of a half-man, half-beast obsessed with his scent. 

Kylo shivers at the taste, the smell that coats his face. It’s musky, very slightly sour. It’s not as strong as the taste of Hux after he’s worked 16 hours straight and he’s too tired to do anything but let Kylo service him with his mouth (“It’s been a Brandy and your ridiculous lips shift, Ren”). It’s subtle, but not when he’s sucking at the very sweat pores themselves, parting the wispy reddish bush with his tongue, encouraging the essence to never leave his skin. As he orally worships this sensitive spot, he can feel Hux pull on his mental bonds, trying to get away by instinct only, but held immobile. There’s a spot he’s particularly fascinated by - a sort of cave formed by the pectoral muscle that becomes exaggerated when he twists Hux’s arm just so; he does so now and he bites the pec before enjoying the slope, a slide for his tongue. A loud breath is all that gives away his focus’s torment; laughter is only something doled out for demonstration, a condescension here or an exaggeration there, never ever a laugh of joy. 

Composure is his lover condensed down to one word, a word Kylo has never personally known. 

He’s sure something positively primitive blazes in his eyes when he comes up from the vulnerable spot because the knowing smile is back in the corners of Hux’s lips. He hates that smug expression and that he’s rewarding the behavior that put it there. For every centimeter of Hux’s body that Kylo owns, Hux owns an equal portion of Kylo’s soul, or whatever is left of it. They’ll use each other up until one day all that’s left will be a scratched up silver and black mask and an immaculately pressed greatcoat. 

“Did you really need a reminder of ownership?” asks Kylo, his voice enough of a rumble even without the vocoder. He completely releases any mental hold, dropping his general to the ground abruptly and Hux stumbles, one knee dropping to the hard metal floor, but his reflexes are fast enough to keep him from crumpling like a sack of shuura fruit. When lightly-colored eyes with darkly-filled content glare up at him, a flicker of desire undulates in Kylo. The Force again locks Hux into place. He looks good like that, on one knee as though genuflecting, like a well-carved statue. Kylo slowly removes his gloves, one and then the next, and Hux watches them hungrily, expecting the open palm slap to his gorgeous cheekbones. Kylo doesn’t disappoint, and the sound of his hand making contact rings out in the quiet of the room. 

As always when things escalate to this point, Hux thinks about his father. The memories broadcast like a holovid and leave no impact on Hux’s mind, stir no emotions, but arise anyway, unbidden. The violence strengthens his desire, hardens his erections.

Kylo had offered once to remove the negative paternal memories under the likely belief that they are what links the violence and the libido together - though in truth, this sexual idiosyncrasy is quite fortuitous given his own savage approach to the bedroom (and life) - but, as he’d expected, Hux had been uncooperative. “And turn me into a simpering slushbrain like Mitaka?” he had said with deep offense and no small amount of suspicion. Kylo hadn’t even been able to argue: the effects of his repeated tinkering with the lieutenant’s severely malleable brain (a grim pastime, perhaps, but there isn’t much else to do on the _Finalizer_ ) are visible to everyone on board, and the man is as prone now to walk into a room only to leave again in confusion as he is to stay.

The second slap, the one for the other cheek, is for Hux’s satisfaction - he hates uneven things (Kylo himself is an exception he grants). It echoes in a lovely way, creating audible ambience to the new glare, the one with light spots of delight, that takes aim at him. 

His general will only suffer paralysis with good humor for so long. With this in mind, he releases the hold slowly, allowing Hux’s long legs to feel their own strength and to reassert themselves in the artificial gravity of the ship. He rises slowly, keeping eye contact, bracing for another hit or a trick. He’s right to be wary. There is a desire to knock him down again, to stoke that insecurity and to force another demonstration of cat-like agility, an attribute that Kylo often forgets the man has, hidden as well as it is behind the rigidity of military training. Instead, he reaches up, runs his hands through the product-free strands of hair, allows his hand to drift downward, tracing long neck, speckled chest, and ginger happy trail. All this land belongs solely to him.

He’s never owned anything with this amount of value, not even when he’d been the son of a princess. True power exists in the dark side, but it also exists here. Kylo doesn’t know how they are both equally master and slave, how he can simultaneously feel the heady exaltation of possessorship and the demeaning discomfort of Hux’s manipulation. 

A wicked thought flashes through Kylo’s mind, an inspired way of asserting his ownership. As though by strong magnetism, Kylo summons into hand the knife that resides permanently in the sleeve of Hux’s coat, the one that is a secret, the one that Kylo assumes (with such deep prophetic certainty that it occasionally wakes him from his dreams) will one day be lodged deep into his back. He’d be a fool to believe that Hux keeps no secrets that he hasn’t discovered, and, he imagines that Hux must conclude the same of him, and that the surprise on his face at the brandishing of the weapon has more to do with the intensification of violence than the revelation that Kylo knows about the monomolecular blade. There may be a plethora of mysteries that Kylo has yet to unveil about his deadly bedmate, but there are no physical ones; their liaison may have lasted less than a year, but the survey of his territory has been thorough.

He raises the knife to the pointed cartilage of Adam’s apple, and watches it bob briefly downwards as the general swallows, an indication of fear that doesn’t reveal itself in Hux’s eyes. The knife at Hux’s throat could be an empty threat, or it could be a step in a process of punishment, one well-earned by a culmination of vicious acts as he attempts to test the bonds that they have forged. Armitage Hux truly hates how much love he feels, and he chafes under its tethers, lashes out with intent to wound. 

His lips crook upwards as the knife drifts lower, over the soft dip between SCM muscles, and this should worry his love victim, but there’s firm evidence between Hux’s legs that fear is not overriding arousal. Its sharp tip comes to a stop at the center and ever so slightly to the left of his chest. Hux’s body is still but more relaxed, the clever man realizing that the aim is too deadly to be a serious threat. He knows Kylo won’t kill him, and there the assumptions of safety end.

“You do need a reminder,” says Kylo, voice soft and low. It’s with the slightest pressure that he begins, the blade sharp enough to do the work for him, and a tiny droplet of blood appears. Hux’s body is no longer held by the Force; he can move about at will, and could easily step back. He doesn’t. Kylo’s hand is steady, slicing down a few centimeters. The skin acts as a zipper, blood popping up where it parts. Kylo can feel his Hux’s eyes on him, but with the precision of this particular instrument, he dares not look away. The knife is as sharp as his lover’s tongue, though in some ways less dangerous. 

He returns to the center of the first cut, angling his next line on the upwards diagonal. Kylo feels hyper aware of everything: the soft controlled breaths from his human carving board, the tiny pool of blood on the top of the blade, the armpit scent still coating his nostrils, the imagined echoes of Hux’s compliance with the seductive stranger, and the pulsing in his dick, a natural reaction to his lover’s nudity and an unnatural reaction to wielding the knife against his lover’s flesh. The diagonal jut of the lower leg of the ‘K’ that he’s etching is immediately united by blood to the upper. The drips mask the letter, but those can be washed away; the skin will need time to repair itself. 

He pulls back, knife still in his hand and studies it. The lower leg is too long. Good. Hux will hate its asymmetry. Hux looks down at it as well and sighs. “The first letter of your name. How original.” Judgment, mockery. Kylo wonders why he ever allows his general to speak at all. He should permanently render him mute. He’d take satisfaction in watching the man attempt to command a crew without the use of his voice. 

Crooked or not, the blood looks fetching on his general. He looks younger than his 34 years when he’s out of his greatcoat, younger still with the crimson rivulets carving a path over his chest and belly, and an expression of eagerness ruining the sincerity of his mocking words. Kylo gathers some of the life fluid onto his fingers. It has cooled quickly, like semen, already reaching room temperature. Like a child creating a dappled sun with paints, he daubs stripes of red on Hux’s hard dick. Its consistency becomes almost dusty with the friction, doesn’t leave quite the warning sign he was hoping for, but Hux likes it, his teeth biting down on his lower lip. 

And that is why he owns Hux and why he seeks no other.

He kisses his general’s lips and squeezes hard at the bloody cock in his hand, enjoying the way that Hux tilts his hips forward as he does. Hux can lie with such conviction that it doesn’t even trip up the alarms of Kylo’s Force-enhanced intuition but that’s only with his words. His body doesn’t lie well at all; it shouts its tells, any discomforts or anger or this: his lust. 

“You don’t deserve me on my knees,” Kylo hisses. He may not deserve it, but Kylo is unable to resist knowing what the taste of Hux’s skin and precome and blood mixed together is like. He grabs the general and, being mindful of the low ceiling, wrenches him over his shoulder like he weighs nothing. Objections tumble from Hux’s mouth as Kylo takes him to the sleeping area of his quarters but when he’s flung down onto the military-firm bed, his cock is as rigid as the hilt of a lightsaber and he doesn’t move from where he’s set, waiting. Kylo strips quickly under the intense gaze of his lover. Whatever is between them is always like this, a battle in pretense only. They both want, regardless of false stoicism or fury. Which is why, though he’s been tricked into these quarters, he’s again pressing his mouth between Hux’s legs; his desire matters more than his ego.

He’d been right to cave, because the taste of the copper of blood on hard erection is so good and even his tight-lipped general is moaning at the wrongness of it. He goes down all the way and tightens his throat in a semi-swallow; it makes Hux curse and writhe. **Could your imaginary friend do this?** he taunts through the Force, mouth too full to speak the words out loud. He has just enough room to dart out his tongue and lick the top of his balls, gagging a bit as he does. Hux nearly shouts.

He has to be careful doing this because he’s too good at it. If he doesn’t want to make Hux come, he has to back off when he wants to keep going. Self-control is not his strong suit, but he needs to reclaim his territory, even if it’s only warding off the shadow of a threat. So, though lurching hips and pulsing cock invite him to keep going, he stops, looking up into his lover’s panting face with intent.

The lubricant they use when they have penetrative sex (much rarer than just oral) is in a nondescript bottle kept near the aftershave and liquid soap on a plastic shelf attached to the fresher wall. The smug satisfaction on Hux’s face as he watches it float over to the bed makes Kylo want to smack him again; the arrival of the monomolecular knife that follows does the job for him. 

“Who do you belong to?” he asks, knife landing on his open palm. 

“My mirror will tell me a backwards K,” taunts Hux, always ready for punishment. 

Kylo shakes his head with disbelief at the stubbornness. “How much more must I do to remind you?”

“At least three more letters, Lord Ren.” 

The cutting process hadn’t impressed Hux who preferred jarring blunt force pain (just like daddy used to give) but he wants more. It’s with awe that Kylo realizes that Hux _wants_ his name there, wants that badly etched nametag upon his skin. He’d brought the knife in to collect more blood, but this offering means so much more. He stares at Hux beneath him unable to believe his luck. Good things don’t happen to him. But then, Armitage Hux isn’t a good thing. He is a very bad thing. And he is everything that Kylo wants.

He’s more precise this time, not wanting to leave the name crooked if it’s actually wanted. The little blood bubbles smear when his fingers brush close enough to pop them. The ‘O’ is so tricky, he wishes he had gone with Ren, though that is what the knights are called, a shared name, and not his own. And he would not share this object with any of the others. When he finishes, he tosses the knife to the floor and rakes his fingers through the mess, giving himself red palms. Hux looks like a ravaged prey animal; all except his eyes which will always be those of a predator.

Kylo pours lube out of the bottle, leaving smudges of bloody fingerprints behind, and mixes it with the red liquid on his hands. Together they become pink and very wrong. “Spread yourself for me,” he commands. It isn’t often that he takes Hux - almost always the other way, in fact - but he’s in a conquering spirit and he can tell through the Force and by the speed at which his order is followed, that Hux is in the mood to be conquered. At the first touch of Kylo’s finger to that sweet tight place, Hux’s flagging penis reawakens. Just one finger, but it gets hungrily gripped for all its worth, and it’s amazing to think that this will accommodate him eventually. 

Hux sighs (in pleasure for a change instead of testily) when Kylo adds a second finger. The puckered skin holds tight, but the warm soft inside allows more motion, and he shifts forward and back more easily than in and out. Despite it being himself usually on the receiving end of a hard cock, his tongue has spent a considerable amount of time where his fingers are now. Unlike the armpit, Hux had needed no coercing into accepting his mouth there and sometimes straight up demands it of Kylo. The bedroom (or whatever room they’ve comandeered for fucking) is the only place either of them acquiesces.

With a third finger, Hux grows louder and his hips tilt further down onto Kylo’s hand. His chest is drippy with red and Kylo allows himself a small taste of the stuff straight from the source, beding down to lick the blood off. The clench strangles his fingers and Hux whines. “You’re disgusting, Ren.”

“We both are, Hux,” he assures, kissing him and transferring the coppery taste onto his tongue. Their kiss is sloppy and open like Hux’s ass has become, ready for fucking.

He adds more lube to himself before slowly sliding into Hux, his villainous treasure. He catches the wince and waits until Hux’s hand grabs tightly at his shoulder, a signal to move further. This is the third time he’s been in Hux, far too infrequent for the punishing fuck he’d had in mind upon arrival. He takes it easy and his lover doesn’t complain. Not at first anyway. 

“You can start fucking me now,” he growls.

“Who do you belong to?” asks Kylo rocking his hips in the same slow steady motion. 

"Get a mirror and I’ll tell you,” spits Hux.

It’s impressive how he’s always torn between fucking Hux or just beating the ever loving shit out of him. He does a mix of both, fucking him hard enough that the bed beneath them complains while Hux huffs in a delight of pained pleasure. Kylo puts all his weight on one arm so that he can reach out and touch the open wound on Hux’s chest. He presses down on it with his palm, watches as the blood trickles again, just tiny little spots that escape from the nearly closed flesh. Hux hisses. 

“Do you need a mirror to feel that?” he asks. “You’re mine, Hux. I own this.” He punctuates his statement by pushing still harder with both hand and cock. 

His hand is freshly coated red again so that when he takes Hux’s semi-hard dick in hand, each touch is marked. He slows his fucking down, matches it to a new rhythm his fist finds. Hux likes a much harder grip than he ever uses on his own, and sometimes he gets too zealous, feels the bloom of true pain in the general’s mind (and again Brendol pops up, and one day Kylo’s going to have to do something about that), so he’s careful now to skirt the edge between firm and too hard. His hips find an optimal angle. For all Hux’s complaining about his efficiency, he has never once criticized him about this. He works that angle, works the cock in his hand, and closes his eyes, lost in the sensation of the tightness pulling on his own dick and of the feeling of being right where he belongs. 

When Hux gets close, he gets quiet, his teeth hard in his lower lip sealing away any errant sounds. Kylo on the other hand gets breathier, grunting like a beast and working his way towards orgasm with a dark side-sharp focus. The bed continues to cry out, the loudest of them in the room, until finally Hux hits that point and every thought and feeling rushes out of him, like an explosion from his mind. Kylo can’t hold on anymore, not when he can feel his lover hit that precipice, topple over it with a vengeance. He cries out Hux’s name when he comes, body trembling from the power of it. A few lurches of his hips carry him through the aftershocks of it. Then he’s looking down at open lips and messed hair and green eyes and so much drying blood. 

He’ll never take another lover. It will be Hux or he will die alone.

“Good grief, Ren. Look at what a mess you’ve made of my bed!” 

Kylo pulls out and lies in the very narrow space left him on the bed, one arm and a portion of his back dangling off. “And your chest,” he says. He remains there as Hux gets up, legs slightly bowed, to wash up. Even though he could have the extra room, he doesn’t move. He just lets his thoughts remain orgasm-hazy, replaying their words and the feel of Hux around him. 

When he returns from the fresher, he also brings in a wet rag for Kylo, a surprisingly considerate offering. “What took you so long anyway? I’ve barely seen you this month.”

So that’s what it was. Hux was lonely. He’s not wrong. Kylo has been too busy to make time for their sexual escapades, had only seen him in meetings or in brief public encounters between his own tasks. He’d been off-ship for nearly a week in there too. “Is that why?” he asks.

“Why what?” Hux knows perfectly well. 

He slides the cover out from underneath Kylo’s body nearly displacing him to the floor. He tosses the blood-stained sheets into a sack for the droids to collect. There’s a criss-cross of bandages across his chest and he’s wearing underwear. It’s a shame that Kylo’s handiwork is covered up, but at least it’s still there, blood clots and repairing tissue. He wonders if he’ll need to refresh it from time to time. 

“Don’t do that again,” Kylo says, his voice as low and stern as it goes.

Hux crawls into the bed, grabbing him closer until they’re enfolded in each other, warmed only by body heat. He licks some water droplets from Hux’s upper arm that the towel had missed. 

“I make you no promises,” replies Hux. 

The games continue. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
